Closing Day

Now that I've opened my blog up for further comment and possible future ammunition (I've given out the link to a few more people than I thought I would at this point), I feel it's necessary to stick to my guns and continue posting everyday. The problem is that by the time I make it home from a full day of work (where the life and creativity gets sucked from my brain and my soul by the succubi that are my co-workers) and get a little reverb and recharge from the serenity of meetings and fellowship, I'm pretty exhausted. All I really want to do is come inside, turn my bed down and stack all the pillows just the way Mary Louise and I life them, knock out my nightly reading and inventory, then crawl between the sheets and turn on some Midnight Syndicate or Nox Arcana and chill out with a little Stephen King.

That's usually when the reality of having to return phone calls and text messages that I've been putting off throughout the day really hits me. Do I send the responses that begin the conversations? Do I only send two or three to the two or three people that I really wouldn't mind talking to a bit? Or do I put them all off until tomorrow morning in the hopes that I'll be alert and oriented before o-six-hundred-hours and ready to engage in a little pre-work banter?

Regardless of the outcome I opt for, the last case scenario is very rarely one to come to fruition. I need my morning time to get my nose in the literature and my knees by my bed to connect with my higher power and the spiritual side of things. I have to do this to prepare for the hellish existence that I feel I'm walking into every morning as I make my way down Interstate-20 to the tenth exit. Contrary to constant remonstrances with the Serenity Prayer and reminders that I have only three weeks yet, I still can't help allowing my thankless job and co-existence with assholes to continue to suck me dry. Still, I felt angrier today than usual, and I'm sure it showed. The end of the month and a new beginning cannot arrive quickly enough. I'm kind of surprised I'm writing this, but I feel like treating this space the way it was originally intended (and originally treated so many months ago now that the time passed has turned into years).

My time may be full, my social life fruitful, my recovery on track, and my extracurricular involvements both plentiful and rewarding, but the anxiety and worthlessness that I feel from staying in a position far beyond the point of hope has gotten me down. My sinuses are screaming at me (along with this twitch in my left eyelid that I've had for the past couple of weeks - I looked it up on WebMD: stress!) and my body is aching for some good, solid rest and relaxation. Truth be told, I have nothing for which to complain. I'm a generally happy guy, relatively wholesome and overwhelmingly pleasant. It's funny how one tiny aspect of one's life (meant to be tiny, but I'm one of those people who sometimes allows himself to be defined by what he does between the hours of eight and five) can really run riot on the senses and the soul.

To combat the blues and the periods of undue stress, I've got the book clubs and Stephen King, the people in the fellowship and the lovely souls beyond, meetings and meditations, family life and my writing, Arrested Development and The Killing, Brodie V. and Sarah E., Meg and Angie, Mary Louise and my mom - for what do I really have to complain? What are my sufferings compared to those of those chicks locked up in that house in Ohio for ten years of their lives? Compared to the amputees surviving the bombings in Boston? Compared to the tons of sick and scared and starving people in the world? I have a roof over my head and warm bed with a loving dog. I have friends and family. I have food and showers. I have everything I could ever want or need. Things aren't anywhere near as bad as I allow my job to make me think they are.

Enough of my reckless ranting for one night.

Where are we in The Shining, and what are my thoughts on the novel today?

I remember originally opening the book either the summer before, or the summer following, second grade. I remember doing it again later in life. Before sobriety. Maybe drinking at the time, maybe not, but before sobriety (and exposure to AA) regardless. So, my thoughts and feelings toward the work may be predisposed to relating it to the ideologies that fascinate and drive me today. I definitely believe that it's a work that feels more about a troubled family than a troubled place. I still don't know if it's more the hotel that's haunted or Jack Torrence, but I did note in my reading last night that Dick's story of the thing that he saw in Room 217 occurred long before Jack or Wendy or Danny were even blips on his radar, so there has to be something in the setting as evil in itself. I do know, though, that there is undoubtedly something in Jack's weak hold on the separation between himself and his last (or next) drink.

The guests are all departing, Danny is learning about his gift from the good chef, and the entire idea of having a job like theirs for the winter is sounding like something that would really be magical, something that would really do a busy guy like me a lot of good - something to give me time to rest and think and read and write.

Of course something like that would sound great to someone who loves to retreat from the world into books and alternate realities. If only I didn't already know how it all ends...